Mind-blowing automation tools for any business, recommended by 11 experts

If you want to save time and make more money while running your business, you need great automation tools.

From sending out emails to processing payments, most online businesses today rely heavily on automation tools. They allow businesses to run with fewer employees – and to operate even when the business owner and team are asleep.

But which tools should you be using in your business? We asked 11 experts for their top automation tool picks.

1) Vin Agarwal, Diabetes Life Solutions

In the current environment and ever changing world I strongly believe Zapier is a must. Most people are working on multiple projects or tasks every day. It’s so easy to have these tasks stack up and before you know it you may be spending time on a non essential task instead of something else that’s more urgent.

Zapier will help you stay on track, and it can be designed to set up specific actions in your day to day workflow so you will no longer struggle prioritizing what needs to be done. What’s really nice is Zapier is a Google chrome ‘add on’ and it can connect to most apps you are already using.

We all know time is one of our most valuable assets, and Zapier is definitely a good tool to use to save time and to help with your workflow process.

2) Amanda Thomas, Konstruct Digital

I love automations & automation tools. Especially little ones that can help make repeatable tasks that much easier. Here are a few tools that I love and some examples of how I use them:

  1. Zapier – This is obviously one of the most popular tools and for good reason. Integrating with over 5000 apps, it makes connecting many of your favourite tools easy. One way that we use it: managing HARO opportunities. Our HARO opportunities send a parsing email in Zapier address which checks for specific key terms. If there’s a match, it connects to our Asana project management system and assigns a task to respond to the opportunity.
  2. Asana – Another core tool in our stack, Asana has some great automation workflows that can make project management easier. For example, if a task status is changed to “Roadblocked” it could trigger a followup subtask assigned to an account manager to troubleshoot the issue.
  3. Google Sheets Scripts – We use some custom scripts which connect to various APIs to help enrich some of our spreadsheet data. This saves us many hours every week.

Happy automating!

3) Justin Herring, YEAH! Local

You already know how aggravating manually importing and exporting lead data can be. I was searching for marketing technologies that would allow businesses to streamline this procedure. That’s when I discovered Lead Sync, one of LeadsBridge’s key product offers.

It connected with LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms, TikTok Lead Ads, Facebook Lead Ads, and Google Lead Ads, which piqued my interest.

LeadsBridge’s core is Lead Sync. It’s a real-time integration solution that lets you sync your lead data with your favorite marketing tools in real-time.

With this tool, you can easily capture leads and move them through the pipeline. You can start segmenting leads as soon as you obtain them from various lead sources, such as:

  • Lead Ads on Instagram
  • Lead Ads on Facebook
  • Lead Generation Ads on LinkedIn
  • Lead Generation on TikTok
  • YouTube Extensions for TrueView Lead Forms
  • Lead Form Extensions for Google Ads

Additionally, you can send auto-responses and SMS messages to your leads. You can categorize your leads and distribute them as needed for a more effective process. It also includes advanced data mapping and capabilities for quickly sifting leads.

I use this daily on our client’s accounts and it saves us hours of manually adding leads and sending emails.

4) Bowen Khong, Fractal Digital

After years of trying out different automation email marketing tools, I have found SmartReach.io to be the best and most efficient. 

This software is user friendly, the pricing is great compared to other platforms and you tend to get a lot more than what you pay for. It also allows you to track your performance on each campaign you set which helps you see if your outreach approach works. 

I am also extremely impressed with the customer service as they are always on it and quick at fixing issues(they usually respond within 5 minutes). 

Another important factor is you can do a warm up campaign which helps optimize deliverability of emails and you can also run spam tests to ensure that you have configured your emails correctly. I would definitely recommend this platform.

5) Kim Leary, Squibble

Pipedrive is a CRM platform and has a brilliant set of automation tools for keeping track of all your web leads. 

Using their software you can streamline your contacts from the moment they complete a form to becoming full blown customers and everything in between.

We use Pipedrive to automate our entire sales and marketing process. A user lands on our website and downloads a PDF guide. From there they’re automatically sent the download and some targeted emails. Then they’re automatically subscribed into our bi-monthly email campaigns. As a lead they’re also added into our CRM so as they progress through the sales pipeline we can track what they’ve opened and the engagement we’ve had. 

It works because all our contacts are stored in one database and not distributed across multiple platforms where data gets messy and complicated. 

6) Omar Sayyed, Ties

With the introduction of GPT-3 and the explosion of use in the marketing world by way of OpenAI, content automation has drastically changed. We now have the ability to produce copy in a fraction of the time it would take to write with incredibly close parallels in quality.

Copymatic has quickly become one of our most used tools, as it cuts down the lead time in writing content for our products as well as new collections we roll out. It does excellent to help the SEO team with meta titles and descriptions as well, so we can generate unique ones across our vast collections and product selection.

Those who don’t adapt get left behind, get on board if you want to excel in marketing for 2023 and beyond.

I even used it to write this using the tool!

7) Diana Loh, Avante Yoga Orchard

Businesses of all sizes can benefit from using automation tools. Automation tools are software programs that help with tasks such as customer service, marketing, accounting and more.

There are many benefits to using automation tools in your business. Some of the benefits include: 

  • Increased efficiency: Automation tools help you automate tasks that are time-consuming and repetitive. This allows you to focus on other important tasks, which can increase your efficiency.
  • Improved accuracy: Automated tasks are often more accurate than manual tasks. This is because they eliminate human error.
  • Cost savings: Automation can help you save money on labor costs. In addition, it can also help you save money on materials and resources.

My personal favourite is using Zapier. I have used zapier for many things including auto adding customer information and data into an excel sheet then updating my CRM with them. This has saved me plenty of time having to do them myself. 

8) Nestor Vazquez, SEO Mexico

An API or application programming interface is a set of definitions and protocols to design and integrate application software.

APIs allow your products and services to communicate with others, without the need to know how they are implemented. This simplifies application development and saves time and money.

If you want to operate with speed and innovation, you need a modern integration platform that can keep up. The API-based approach accelerates your integration projects with the power of API-driven connectivity.

Get your business up and running faster, reduce operating costs, innovate at scale, and empower employees to create the customer experiences that keep them coming back for more.

Meta API contains functions and procedures that help in system integration, allowing other applications or programs to reuse its functionality.

9) Lito James, Massive Peak

I am using a few automation tools but my favourite one is ActiveCampaign. ActiveCampaign is a powerful email marketing automation tool that helps marketers and business owners grow their list, create high-converting campaigns, and measure results.

It is the most complete marketing automation software in the industry, with features that enable you to execute all of your email marketing strategies. The ActiveCampaign CRM integration is one of the most powerful features in this software. It lets you seamlessly integrate your customer data into your email campaigns. This allows you to send targeted emails based on customer actions and preferences without ever having to leave the ActiveCampaign interface. so I love it. 

10) Kartik Ahuja, GrowthScribe

Here are two awesome automation tools that I would recommend for your business: 

1) Zapier

Zapier is a great option for streamlining your processes (thanks to its simple interface and step-by-step wizards).

It’s mainly because Zapier is a no-code platform. Even for entry-level users, using it without any technical understanding is not an issue. It allows you to automate repetitive tasks and automate workflow with multiple steps. Workflow automation consists of two parts: triggers and actions.

And triggers are the events that start your workflow, and actions happen when those triggers occur.For example, suppose someone signs up for your newsletter. In that case, Zapier could automatically send them a welcome email through Mailshake, add them to a list in Salesforce and also add their name and email address to your CRM database.

2) TexAu

This is great for automating your manual processes, including scraping LinkedIn pages and Google maps. This will come in handy while collecting a list of employees working within a company, which will help you find the right decision-makers.

Next, you can set up personalized messages where the tool picks up the person’s first name and sends them automated emails.

11) Shaurya Jain, Attention Always

Over the years, I have tried and tested quite a lot of automation tools and would recommend these two for sure:

  1. Integrately: It is an easy-to-use automation tool that enables you to connect multiple apps with ease. Automated workflows will make your life easier and more efficient by working behind the scenes so you don’t get distracted by repetitive tasks anymore.
  2. Phantombuster: It’s great for lead generation. I use it along with Sales Navigator which is a deadly combination for generating a huge lead list. 

You can use it for gathering leads, contacting them, tracking activities, and extracting followers and prospects from different social media platforms.